I have posted a compiled version of the AudioEngine branch for download >>XBMC-AE Final<<

The main source code by developer gnif is available here, under the branch "ae_rebase".

Any Windows-specific development not pushed to the main branch is here, under the branch "ae_rebase". The next release is being prepared under "ae_dsp".

The purpose of this thread is to gather test results and feedback for the branch for the Windows platform only.

The main AudioEngine thread is quite long now, and as the branch gets closer to release it will be difficult to keep track of test results on all platforms and debug effectively.

If you wish to be a tester please be aware that you must know: all details of your test platform including hardware and driver status, how to post a debug log and effectively troubleshoot issues, and be able to capture screenshots and post them. If you continue to use other versions of XBMC at the same time please know how to switch between different versions of advancedsettings.xml and guisettings.xml, via profiles or manually. Also please note that the library used by the AE branch may not be the library currently used by XBMC - if you add media please do so while using whatever your main XBMC version is.

This is not a support thread for those just wanting to try it and get help running it. If you are unsure of what is required or are not adept at setting up and troubleshooting XBMC in general please do not become a tester.

You do not need to "sign up" - feel free to post your comments at any time as long as you understand the above.

We look forward to your help and testing as the project prepares for integration.

I have both installed using portable mode. I don't know what the difference is between the two.
Only thing I have noticed in my limited testing is that the AE branch plays static when playing multi channel DTS flacs. Is that expected?

I have made some tests.
DTS
DTS 96/24
Dolby Digital
plays OK on my hardware.
there are audio drop outs on Dolby True HD and DTS HD MA.
There is a log when playing Dolby True HD on http://pastebin.com/TFcQD1tb
Drop outs are at about 14.15, 14.16, 14.17 and 14.19.

The tested media plays OK with the Windows patch version, but in this case there are problems to switch audio streams.

Great to see we have some testers! When you find an issue please make as clean a debug log as you can: open XMBC-AE, wait 10sec for start-up tasks to complete, then duplicate the problem with a minimum of actions and post the log. This makes reading through them as easy as possible.

Also please make sure you are using the version linked in the first page, or built from my GitHub source. This avoids confusion between build dates and versions.

If you do build it yourself please ensure that you are building a "release" version and have enabled optimizations. Debug versions are slower by nature and unoptimized builds or debug builds can show performance hits easily construed as bugs. Any build I place in the downloads area will be optimized and a release version.

@P.I.H. - thanks for the log. Question - do you have Sync Playback to Display enabled? If so, can you disable and retry? Would like to see if that clears up the discontinuities.

@Dixon Butz - portable mode is fine for testing. I haven't tried a DTS FLAC on my end yet - will have to create a sample. That's a good catch - can you post a log?

@Liquidskin76 - great! please use my build/git as it has a few bug-fixes in it compared to gnif's right now,

@greeneyez - glad you want to help

Thx to those posting their system info as well - helps to know the platform details and we need a wide range for a comprehensive test.

P-I H Wrote:Made some more testing and if
<multichannellpcm>true</multichannellpcm>
is set to false on my configuration xbmc will crash.

Was that when playing back a multichannel FLAC or trying to decode a movie? Multichannel LPCM is the fallback if you disable TrueHD passthrough, but needs to fail gracefully if it can't. Please let me know what you tried to play that led to the crash. Thx.

I got the crash without playing anything, when I used the GUI to change the reciever's Audio settings in System/Settings/System/Audio/Reciever supports LPCM to false. Xbmc crashed when I did the change and did not accept the change.

However I was able to do the change when playing a non HD folder. After the change I closed xbmc. After this xbmc crashed immediatly at start up. I then change the setting to true in the xml file and was able to start xbmc again.

I made some more testing.
The previous test was made on an xbmc installed on top of the Windows Patch version. This time I uninstalled xbmc and checked the field to remove all settings. Then installed the HE version.
This time xmbc behaved much better. There were occasional audio dropouts, but much less frequent.
I still got the crash when Multichannel LPCM capable reciever was unchecked.
Played an mkv file with DTS HD MA which worked fine.
Played some .ts files with recorded HD TV programs, that also worked fine
To use the "scale" to move back and forth in media with non HD audio works fine, but in media with HD audio there are long delays before picture and audio recover and sometimes audio will not come back at all.